Friday, May 16, 2008

Angela Keaton, Fact Checker?

Susan, you're apparently confused about the Boaz essay, which you may not have read. Boaz was on the Cato team, whose management of the moderate Clark campaign was viciously criticized by long Rothbard and Nolan essays (which you perhaps haven't read either). We can either learn from LP history, or repeat it. Your call. But hey, I'm not in the caucus that is recycling 30-year-old Rothbardian strategy texts about building cadre... :-)

Angela, if a single one of my facts don't "check", then here's what I ask you to do. Type an opening quotation mark. Paste a statement of mine. Type a closing quotation mark. Then give evidence that my statement is false. That's all I ask. I'm not inerrant, and if my research includes errors, I want to learn about them.

Yep, M is quite out there to claim that Rothbard was a GOP plant for undermining the LP. We reformers generally prefer to leave such infiltration conspiracy theories to folks like Christine Smith and Tom Knapp, but you know that the far-flying M marches to the beat of a very distant and fascinating drum. (That reminds me, after Portland at least one prominent California radical, the owner of the ca-liberty list, speculated that the "funding" of the Reform Caucus should be investigated for nefarious connections.)

Eric, you can either believe good principled moderate libertarians when we complain that too many radicals use the Party's foundational texts as bludgeons against us -- or not. While you make up your mind, I propose a simple deal: I'll stop protesting the bludgeoning of moderates with the Party's texts when either the bludgeoning stops, or the texts are no longer bludgeon-shaped. Fair enough? That's the deal we'll effectively be voting on in Denver. If you hadn't quit the PlatCom, you'd have gotten to enjoy me being called an "eco-fascist" and having my policies said to be on a slippery slope leading to those of Pol Pot. I guess I should just sit at the kids' table and take it for the team, but sorry, no.

Don't confuse me with the reformers who say winning is all that matters. I say what matters is uniting at the ballot box all those who want more liberty. *That* is how we can "drive issues" -- not by calling for personal secession, or immediate non-enforcement of all tax laws, or the restoration of the 2004 language legalizing child prostitution, etc. Those issues won't "drive"; they're stuck in a ditch. I don't begrudge our radical candidates trying to get them unstuck, but I just don't agree that all our candidates have to be in the ditch with them.